Excited For Christmas!

Christmas you say? It’s still only June!?

We are overjoyed and thrilled to announce that Halsted Version 2.0 will become our Christmas miracle.
We are eagerly anticipating the celebration, and as you can see, Grayson is quite happy too.
Plus he got a snazzy new shirt out of the deal! :-)
Coming soon!! Baby Halsted, Due December 25th. We can’t wait to meet you!

Grayson Airlines: Now Boarding!

Due to Dan’s travel schedule, we decided to celebrate a few days early and throw an amazing BBQ to celebrate little man’s birthday. And with a few weeks preparation, it REALLY was amazing.

Thanks to some awesome inspirations from my sister (who I lovingly refer to as “The woman Martha Stewart aspires to become”) we pulled off a pretty snazzy airplane themed party.

From start to finish, the party was a hit! From the airplane ticket invitations, the runway tables, pom pom clouds, airplane cakes, custom jet fuel & hydraulic fluid punch, one of a kind 1st birthday shirt & birthday banner, all the way to the baggage claim cookies. The house was decorated to the hilt.

And yes, I know Grayson won’t remember this, but it was so fun to do and he’ll never have a 1st birthday again. Besides, his little face was so elated and priceless. I secretly think he knew this day was for him, and all these people in his house were there to celebrate him…or maybe just stare at him and giggle as he dug into his little airplane cake. :-)

We have oodles of pictures out on picasa and we also had our professional photographer come out too, so we should have plenty of memories on film.
Thanks to all the folks who came out to join us! We had such a blast and are so grateful you were able to make it.

Next up, the official birthday date and we’ll have a one year old baby boy!

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We Love The Beach!

For Mother’s Day, Dan surprised us with a trip down to Myrtle Beach. It was so great!

Not only was it Grayson’s first time in the sand, but Dan booked us a room right on the beach. So beautiful and so much fun with yummy seafood, amazing views, great weather, terrific company, and nothing beats watching Grayson explore and delight in new things (although I might be biased and extremely happy he loves the warm weather and water as much as I do).

This resort Dan picked was awesome too. It was so soothing and relaxing to hear the sound of the water and to sit out on the deck taking it all in. So inspiring that Mr Go-get-‘em even decided to take a 6 am Saturday morning run on the beach.

There’s also a huge kids area, complete with a lazy river, 2 big water slides, a ginormous dump-on-ya bucket, 3 kiddy pools each at varying depths, not to mention 2 regular pools & hot tub. Grayson enjoyed all the kiddy pool adventures, but we’ll have to visit again in 2 years when he can truly take in all its wonderment.

Of course, 1 little snafu went down. Little miss prepared, who uses a packing checklist spreadsheet every time we travel, forgot 1 important thing….a camera.
So bear with me, all of these photos are from the iPhone. Oh well, everything else was present and accounted for.

Oh, but wait….upon our departure, the trusty travelers were loading everything into the truck, and to what would my wondering eyes should appear, falling out of the bag???? A CAMERA! Not the big SLR, but our trusty Canon we keep on hand for special “ah, we need a picture!” moments. Uh huh…Dan and I were giggling about it the whole 2 hours home. Well, giggling with a few “D’oh’s” and “Dang’s!” thrown in for good measure. All the more excuse to visit again soon. :-)

And in typical Halsted’s of Carolina fashion, even with only our iPhones, we took a bunch of pictures. So make sure to click here for them all.

Daddy Playing "I'm gonna getcha!"-->

Easter Presents

This was our first Easter away from Mom & Dad in I don't know how many years. We missed them so much!

But to help ease the loneliness, we decided to have brunch with our good friends, The Rueters. The lunch & company was so great and we were so excited and thankful to share the special holiday with good friends!
Thanks Rueters!

And to make the day special for Grayson, we let him "participate" in a massive egg hunt with our 4 neighbors. Of course participate is in quotes because he really just watched & giggled at all the chaos and excitement and held 10 month old conversations with everyone.

Grayson also got a new Easter present to celebrate. How stinkin' cute is this???
He LOVES this thing!
Happy Easter!
Make sure to check out the post about our trip to Washington DC below this one!

Imagine being magically whisked away…

To DC!! This past week, Dan whisked us off to DC for a little family vacation.
It was our first experiment with Grayson on an airplane and all in all, he did fine on the 1 hour, direct flight. However, Dan and I cringe at the thought of taking him on anything longer.
Even though he did well, drinking his bottle at wheels up and happily chomping on pear pieces on descent, poor kiddo does not want to sit still on my lap for great lengths of time.
Understandably so.
My greatest fear is to fly on a long flight, or many long flights, seated directly in front of (or in back of, or next to) someone who isn’t as patient with little ones who are struggling to get their ears acclimated, their boredom extinguished, and their freedom granted after an exhausting day of travel.

After our early flight in, we descended upon DC in expert sightseer fashion. In 4 days, we managed to stick to Grayson’s nap & feeding schedule, squeeze in a viewing of every major monument & memorial (except Iwo Jima, which we struggled to even find directions to), the Capital, Arlington, the Pentagon, the White House, the Natural History Museum, the Air & Space Museum and we even found time to hit the park for swings, some swim time at the pool, and a trip to the nearest shopping mall for souvenirs.

To give y’all an idea of our success, Dan decided to track our steps, inch by inch, mile by mile via GPS on his iPhone. In layman’s (or Laura’s) terms, we basically ended up walking over 10 miles a day. Sssshew! Now that’s some walkin’! At times I felt like Forrest, “We just felt like runnin’”.

And apparently no trip to DC would be complete without some sort of unnecessary and unsolicited politically charged commentary provided by Hanoi Jane’s wanna-be brother at the Vietnam Memorial. Bleeeck. I didn’t even see it coming. All I wanted to say was, “Dude, seriously not the appropriate time OR place…and if I want your opinion, I'll ask.”

Of course my favorite sight was the Lincoln Memorial. I love it! Something about being able to see him, sitting so dignified, from a half mile away. Yet, when you get within feet of him, he is absolutely HUGE and his features are so well carved. They did an amazing job on that one, in my opinion.

It really amazes me how much time all these sights take too. Before we knew it, the whole day was behind us and our plan to see more than we did that day had to be altered. Looking back, we did just fine. We saw what we wanted to see, and we were even lucky enough to catch things exactly at the right time; for example we walked up JUST as they were starting the changing of the guard at the Tomb of Unknown Soldier. We witnessed an amazing attendance at the “changing” as well: mixed in with Average Jane and Joe, there was a group of young JROTC kids in uniform and a group of retired WWII Vets. The song Taps always makes me teary, but add in the inclusion of a young JROTC member to place a wreath, as well as a Vet to place another wreath, the ambiance, gravity, and significance of the moment could bring Thor to his knees. It was amazing to see, and something I’ll never forget.

That same sentiment could be said about the whole trip. Even though we didn’t spend as much time as we’d like reading every placard in the museums and listening to every second of the monument’s tours, we enjoyed all the family time and all the amazing things to see. The trip definitely instilled a renewed sense of patriotism and reminded us where we started, how far we’ve come, and so many reasons why we’re lucky to be in this country.
And of course we took a ton of pictures. Too many, in fact, to post here…so make sure to click HERE and check out all of them.

Hope everyone had a blessed Easter!

Here's Grayson enjoying ice cubes, rattling around in a cup.

Seriously, why do we buy toys?

I think Grayson enjoyed DC, don't you?